Private Passions

Looking ahead to International Women’s Day, this is a second chance to hear Michael Berkeley’s interview with the trailblazing surgeon Dame Clare Marx, who sadly died in November 2022; the programme is repeated by kind permission of her husband, Andrew. Clare Marx was the first woman to become President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2014, and the first woman to become the Chair of the General Medical Council five years later. Clare Marx had to overcome significant prejudice to reach the top of her field but in 2007 she received a CBE and in 2018 a DBE for services to medicine. But then came the blow of a terminal diagnosis of incurable pancreatic cancer. With characteristic courage and grace, she announced her resignation from the General Medical Council.When she came into the studio, Clare Marx had only eight months to live, but no one would have guessed she was ill. She was calm, elegant, composed. But she knew that this would be her last broadcast interview, a message to her colleagues, her family, indeed to everyone listening. Her music choices include Britten’s Sea Interludes, Verdi’s Requiem, and Mozart’s trio “Soave sia il vento”, a message to all who are about to sail away across the sea. “May the winds be gentle, may the waves be calm.”Michael Berkeley began by asking Clare about that moving public letter of resignation, in which she said: “Since receiving this news, I've been reminded once again of the importance and power of kindness in everything we do as doctors.” Pancreatic Cancer UK www.pancreaticcancer.org.ukInformation and support: Cancer https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1KkkxvD0G1w4l294QCrQZbh/information-and-support-cancerProduced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

For Easter Day, Private Passions celebrates Spring and the music of birdsong with one of the world’s leading experts on birds, Professor Tim Birkhead.An award-winning scientist, author and university lecturer, Tim Birkhead is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the University of Sheffield, and the author of many books that communicate his life-long passion, including “What it’s like to be a bird” and most recently “Birds and Us”, a 12,000-year history of our relationship with birds, from cave art to conservation.His choices include music that Mozart taught to a starling, and the old Catalan “Song of the Birds”, played by Pablo Casals. There will also be the music of birdsong itself, from the Dawn Chorus to the song of the bullfinch, which Tim Birkhead regards as the ultimate songbird. The programme includes the famous recording of Beatrice Harrison playing her cello to a nightingale with the nightingale answering back. Tim Birkhead explores the story of the recording and considers the enduring impact of Beatrice’s duet.A correction: Since we broadcast this programme, new evidence has been brought to light. We’ve now learned that the recording initially believed to be the original 1924 broadcast of Beatrice Harrison and the nightingale, as labelled by the BBC Archives and the National Sound Archive, is instead likely to be a commercial recording released in 1927 by HMV. The labelling has now been corrected to ensure this mix up won’t happen again. Suggestions that the song of the nightingale in 1924 may have been sung by a siffleur are not new but probably impossible to verify since it seems likely that the original 1924 broadcast was never recorded, as the recording technology did not exist at the time. Claims about the real bird being replaced in 1924 by a professional bird imitator, Madame Saberon, are based on written testimony to the BBC from relatives of Madame Saberon, as well as accounts from Madame Saberon herself. There continues to be competing accounts of this extraordinary musical event as well as huge public interest; this demonstrates just how important the story of Beatrice and the nightingale is in the history of broadcasting.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the architect, author and broadcaster Francesco da Mosto. With his shock of white hair, boundless energy and unmistakable accent, Francesco da Mosto is for many of us the quintessential Venetian.His distant ancestors were some of the first settlers to colonise the swampy islands that were to become Venice, fleeing Attila the Hun in the 5th century, and since then the da Mosto family has been at the forefront of Venetian public life.One of the team of architects who restored the opera house in Venice after a devastating fire in 1996, Francesco shot to fame with his BBC television series exploring Venice, Italy and the Mediterranean. And with his English wife Jane, he’s at the heart of the campaign to find a sustainable future for this most beautiful and vulnerable city. Francesco tells Michael about the joys and travails of living in Venice, and about his life in a crumbling palazzo just off the Grand Canal, shared by his parents, his children and more than twenty other Venetian families. And he tells Michael how to cook his favourite Sunday lunch dish.His music choices are a celebration of Italy, with arias from operas by Puccini and by Verdi; a much loved song by Mina Mazzini; music by Ennio Morricone, Alessandro Marcello, and the most famous Venetian composer of them all: Vivaldi. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3.

Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh, talks to Michael Berkeley about faith, doubt, compassion and the powerful emotions stirred up by his favourite music. In 1948, at the age of just 14, Richard Holloway left his home in a small town near Glasgow to train for the priesthood at an Anglican monastery in Nottinghamshire. Nearly four decades later, after working in some of Scotland’s most deprived inner-city parishes, he was appointed Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Church of Scotland. But in 2000 he resigned, unable any longer to reconcile his religious doubts, and his views, especially on gay rights, with church orthodoxy. As he’s navigated his unusual spiritual journey he’s remained an honest, compassionate voice, cutting through dogma and unafraid to engage with uncertainty and celebrate our humanity. Richard Holloway has presented many radio series and has written 33 books, the latest being Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe, an exploration of how we can try to make sense of our fleeting lives in a post-religious world.For Richard Holloway, listening to music is a deeply emotional experience; he chooses pieces by Rachmaninov, Elgar and Brahms, and a psalm and a hymn that bring back powerful memories of life in the seminary as a teenager. And Robert Burns’ Ca’ the Yowes reminds him of the joy of singing with his family around the kitchen table. Producer: Jane GreenwoodA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Misan Harriman didn’t become a photographer till five years ago, when his wife gave him a camera for his fortieth birthday. Since then he’s become world-famous, photographing celebrities such as Tom Cruise, Cate Blanchett, and Meghan Markle – his was the romantic black-and-white photograph of Harry and Meghan announcing her pregnancy last year. Alongside these high-profile celebrity commissions, he’s also become a photographer known for documenting Extinction Rebellion, anti-Trump protests, and the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020 he became the first black person in the 104-year history of British Vogue to shoot the cover of its prestigious September issue; last year he became the Chair of the Southbank Centre, the renowned arts complex in London.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Misan talks about his journey to become a photographer, from early childhood in Nigeria to his time at an English boarding school. He reveals his “superpower” of dyslexia, and how he’s found a new way of shooting portraits in lockdown: “remote photography”.Misan Harriman is a passionate film buff, and all his music choices come from movies that have made a profound impression on him, from the soundtrack to “Ghost” which he saw as a boy, to William Walton’s score for “Henry V” and the moving Dunkirk scene in “Atonement”. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Katy Brand talks to Michael Berkeley about obsession, opera, brass bands and juggling her career as a comedian, actor, novelist and screenwriter. On television, Katy Brand’s Big Ass Comedy Show ran for three series and won her a British Comedy Award, and she has appeared in everything from Peep Show to Midsomer Murders. Her stand-up shows at the Edinburgh Festival have been highly acclaimed, and she is a regular on BBC Radio comedy and drama. Katy has starred in musicals such as West Side Story and Everyone’s Talking About Jamie; and she has written plays and screenplays – her feature film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson, premiered at the recent Sundance Festival and will be on our cinema screens this autumn. Katy tells Michael about her childhood experience as an extra at the Royal Opera House; her grandfather, the trumpet player and brass band conductor Geoffrey Brand; and her passion for the madrigals of the 17th-century Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo.And she describes the obsessions that dominated her early life, which have provided rich material for her books and comedy shows: her conversion to born-again Christianity as a teenager and her ongoing passion for the films Dirty Dancing and Mary Poppins. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Back when Mrs Thatcher was prime minister, it was said there were three powerful women in Britain. There was Mrs Thatcher herself; there was the Queen; and there was Esther Rantzen. Breaking into television at a time when it was very much a man’s world, she became one of the most recognisable and powerful voices in the country, thanks to her Sunday-night show, That’s Life, which ran for 21 years. In today’s fragmented television world, it’s almost unbelievable quite how popular that programme was in the 70s and 80s; up to 22 million people tuned in for a mix of consumer affairs, cheeky vox pops, and rudely shaped root vegetables sent in by viewers. It was a programme that exposed both faulty washing machines and the shortage of organ donors, and it created some serious social campaigns. In 1986 Esther Rantzen set up Childline, which is now run by the NSPCC, and in 2012 she launched Silver Line, offering support to older people. In 2015 she was made a Dame for services to children and older people. In conversation with Michael Berkeley Esther Rantzen looks back on her early days in broadcasting, when her job was to create sound effects for dramas by running round the studio flapping a huge umbrella (to simulate a pterodactyl, apparently). She talks about how she began to realize the scale of abuse suffered by the children in this country, which led to the creation of Childline. She reveals, too, the pleasure she takes now in living in the country, leaving her career behind, and realising that life is for living, not working. Music choices include Elgar, Georges Brassens, Brahms’s Double Concerto, Grieg, and Carmen Jones. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Theaster Gates is a potter, a sculptor, a film-maker, a curator of black history, a real estate developer and a professor of fine art in Chicago, where he lives - and where he’s also transformed a whole run-down area near the university. When he was made a professor in 2007, he bought a derelict bank for a dollar, tore out the urinals, cut them up and sold them off at five thousand dollars each as artworks – thereby raising enough money to create a large new art centre. That was just the beginning, as he explains. Gates’s art and installation work is shown all over the world, and current projects include a library for Obama and this year’s Serpentine Pavilion building. As his recent show at the Whitechapel revealed, his work is ambitious and provocative - he takes pots and deconstructs them so that they’re exploding, back to the original clay. He films his work in dream-like spaces - a huge abandoned factory, for instance, full of broken bricks and haunting music, including his own singing.Theaster Gates is also a musician, the founder of a group called The Black Monks of Mississippi, which aims to rescue old songs from the black South. He brings Michael Berkeley a playlist that includes Scott Joplin, Joseph Boulogne, Rachmaninoff and gospel music sung by Leontyne Price. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

On 8 December 2020, a 90-year-old grandmother became the first person in the world to be given the Covid jab as part of a mass vaccination programme. Within six months more than 30 million people in the UK had received at least one dose. Many people say that extraordinary achievement would not have been possible without Dame Kate Bingham. A venture capitalist with a first-class degree in biochemistry, in May 2020 she was asked by the Prime Minister to head a new Vaccine Taskforce, leading British efforts to find and manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine for the UK and abroad. Her appointment was not without controversy. But, in the words of Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, who invented the AstraZeneca vaccine, “her calm decisions in the uncertain early days of the pandemic saved countless lives”. Kate Bingham was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours List. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Kate Bingham reveals what it was like to create the Taskforce, working remotely from home in Wales. It was her first encounter with the inner workings of government, a culture she describes as paralysed by “groupthink”, and “a massive aversion to risk”. She reveals the music that sustained her, and which she listened to at night when she ran. Kate is an oboist, and she begins her music selection with Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto; other choices include Gustav Holst, Robert Schumann, Arturo Marquez, Guys and Dolls, and a song with lyrics by her son Sam. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The geologist Sanjeev Gupta tells Michael Berkeley about his search for evidence of ancient life in rocks on Mars with the help of NASA’s Mars Rovers, and he plays unique recordings of sounds from the surface of Mars. Professor Sanjeev Gupta is a scientist who takes the long view, the very long view, into Deep Time. As the Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London, he investigates how landscapes have evolved over vast spans of time. His work as a geologist has meant camping out alone for months at a time in some of the world’s most remote places.And Sanjeev Gupta is part of a team of hundreds of scientists working on one of humanity’s most ambitious expeditions ever - NASA’s three billion dollar Perseverance Mars Rover which is helping us to understand what that planet was like an astonishing three-and-a-half billion years ago. The team is searching for evidence of ancient life in rocks on the Red Planet, rocks that will hopefully be returned to earth for analysis in 2031. Music is vital to Sanjeev Gupta’s life. He brings Michael Berkeley music by Bach, Messiaen and Handel and by contemporary composers Peteris Vasks, John Luther Adams and Anna Meredith, music which conjures ‘visions of the beyond’ – starlight, canyons, oceans and heaven.Sanjeev describes the surreal experience of helping to operate the Perseverance Rover as it landed on Mars in February 2021 from a flat above a hairdresser in Lewisham when restrictions prevented him from travelling to NASA Mission Control in California.And he recalls the transcendent experience of listening to music alone on long field trips in the vast deserts of Utah. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Barbara Taylor Bradford’s life story is every bit as extraordinary as one of her novels. As she tells Michael Berkeley in a warm and frank interview, she was born in the back streets of Leeds in 1933, left school at 15 to work as a typist at the Yorkshire Evening Post, and at 18 was the first editor of the paper’s 'Woman’s Page'. By 20 she was an established Fleet Street journalist. And then came the novels - her first book, A Woman of Substance, was published in 1979 and has sold over 32 million copies: it is the story of Emma Harte, an impoverished maidservant who through sheer grit rises to become a phenomenally successful businesswoman. Barbara Taylor Bradford has gone on to write another 34 books, with sales approaching 100 million; many were turned into films and television series by her late husband, the producer Robert Bradford. Barbara takes Michael back to her childhood in Leeds, where her mother, Freda, introduced her to the composers she still loves today: Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Bizet and, especially, Puccini. She talks movingly about her long and happy marriage and how her determination to keep writing has sustained her since her husband’s death; she describes the ambition and determination, which drove her in the male dominated world of journalism in the 1950s; and her pride in the success of her novels. And, at 88, Barbara Taylor Bradford shows no sign of slowing down. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Jamila Gavin was born in the foothills of the Himalayas; her Indian father and English mother met as teachers in Iran and married in Mumbai. By the age of 12, she’d lived in an Indian palace in the Punjab, a bungalow in Poona - and a terraced house in Ealing, west London. Ealing was where the family settled in 1953; Jamila went on to study at London’s Trinity College of Music, and to become a sound engineer and then a director in television. She didn’t start to write until her late thirties, beginning a career distinguished by many awards for her novels, plays and short stories – around 50 books in all. It’s a rich world of myths and fairy-tales, orphans and adventures, ranging from 15th-century Venice to the mountains of India. She’s best known for Coram Boy, her prize-winning novel, later staged at the National Theatre, about the Foundling Hospital – to which Handel gave the royalties from his Messiah.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Jamila Gavin reveals the shocking story, which inspired her to write her first book for children. Her books deal with serious themes: particularly slavery, both historic slavery and people-trafficking now. Reading them, you can forget that these are children’s books; but, she says, any experiences which children suffer should also be experiences they can read about. Jamila Gavin’s playlist includes Handel’s Messiah, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, Schubert, Brahms, Stockhausen - and her favourite Night Raga. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Actress, comedian and playwright Katherine Parkinson shares her favourite music with Michael Berkeley.Two years out of drama school and heavily in debt, Katherine Parkinson was offered a part in a new television comedy series The IT Crowd. As all fans of the cult series know, she played Jen, the hopeless boss of two computer geeks – she was the so-called “normal” one. The series ran from 2006 to 2013, with audiences of two million. For Katherine Parkinson, it made her career, winning her a British Comedy Award and a Bafta. Since then Katherine Parkinson has appeared in everything from stage productions of Sophocles and Chekhov to television sci-fi drama Humans as well as Doc Martin and the sitcom The Kennedys. She has also moved into writing: her play about three people sitting for a painter premiered on television during lockdown.Katherine chooses music by John Tavener, George Gershwin and Thomas Tallis, and polyphonic singing she discovered while filming in Georgia. She tells Michael how she tried to channel her inner Cecilia Bartoli during singing lessons at drama school, and how she had to pretend to be good at housework for her Olivier-nominated role in Home, I’m Darling at the National Theatre. And she talks movingly about her affection for her late father-in-law, the actor Trevor Peacock. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Dame Stephanie Shirley arrived in Britain from Vienna as a five-year-old, without her parents. It was 1939, and she was one of 10,000 Jewish children brought by train on the Kindertransport to escape the Nazis. She went on to become one of the most successful businesswomen of the 20th century; in 1962, working from home, she founded one of the first tech-start-ups: an all-woman software company, Freelance Programmers, which was ultimately valued at almost $3 billion, making seventy of her staff millionaires. Since ‘retiring’, her work has been in philanthropy, with a particular focus on IT and autism – in memory of her son, who had autism, and who died at the age of only 35. She estimates that The Shirley Foundation has given away £67 million, not least for the establishment of three autism charities. She is the author of two books and is frequently asked to give motivational speeches about women in business and her own life story. She says, “I decided to make my life one worth saving”.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Dame Stephanie Shirley looks back on an extraordinarily dramatic life. She describes the Kindertransport train, with children sleeping on the luggage racks, weeping for their lost families. She tells the story of her early days in business, and how she took on the name “Steve” to be taken more seriously. She also had a tape recording of frantic typing that she used to play during work phone calls, to disguise the fact that she was at home. And she talks movingly about her son’s death and how that changed the direction of her life. Her music choices include Bach, Britten’s ‘Ceremony of Carols’, Dido’s Lament and the ‘Cat Duet’ attributed to Rossini. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Professor David Nutt is an expert on drugs, and how they work on the brain. He trained as a psychiatrist, and for almost 50 years his research has focused on new drug treatments for anxiety, depression and addiction. In the late 1980s, at Bristol University, he set up the first unit in Britain to bridge psychiatry and pharmacology. He’s now at Imperial College, where he is Professor of Neuro-psychopharmacology. He has published hundreds of scientific papers and 27 books. All of this makes David Nutt sound like a pillar of the establishment. But the reason most people know his name is that he has repeatedly challenged the government over its policies on illegal drugs and alcohol, arguing, for instance, that it’s more risky to go horse-riding than to take ecstasy. In his words: “no one in a position of authority dares to speak the truth”. But he also stresses “I have repeatedly said that cannabis is not safe”.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, David Nutt looks back on the childhood that gave him the confidence to challenge established opinion. Living on a council estate, he felt out of place at Bristol Grammar School, and was a very anxious child who couldn’t sleep. At night he used to creep to the stairs to hear the Proms drifting up from his father’s radio. Professor Nutt describes fascinating new research into treating depression using the active ingredient of magic mushrooms, and he reveals which music he plays to his patients during these experiments.Music choices include Faure, Nielsen, Grieg and Beethoven – his Seventh Symphony, which David persuaded the crowd to dance to at a New Year’s Eve party. That experiment, he says, was a resounding success. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Meg Rosoff waited until she was 45 to write her first novel, How I Live Now, the story of a passionate love affair between young teenage cousins, set against the background of apocalyptic war. It changed her life, selling a million copies and becoming a film starring Saoirse Ronan. She gave up a series of unfulfilling jobs in advertising and reinvented herself as a writer. Over the last 16 years she’s published eight more novels, as well as eight books for younger readers, including four about McTavish the rescue dog. She’s won numerous awards, including the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award - half a million Pounds, the biggest prize in children’s literature. In Private Passions, she talks to Michael Berkeley about the ways in which she’s reinvented her life over the years. First, there was the decision to come to England from New York and begin a new life here; then, after the tragic early death of her sister, there was the decision to become a writer. It didn’t begin well; she decided to write a book about ponies aimed at teenaged girls, but no publisher would touch it – it was far too sexy. Finding her voice as a writer took a while, and has led Meg Rosoff to think about “voice” in relation to musicians and composers too. Music choices include Bach’s B Minor Mass; “London Calling” by the Clash; Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, and Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Over the last 40 years, Valentina Harris has done more than anyone else to convince the British public that there is a lot more to Italian food than pizza and Spaghetti Bolognese. Her television series and her more-than-50 books have brought her passion for Italian food, wine and culture to a huge audience. She tells Michael Berkeley about her childhood in Tuscany, choosing a romantic song by Georgio Gabor for her aristocratic Italian mother and Stravinsky for her father, who taught her to speak English without a trace of an accent. We hear music from the great gourmet Pavarotti, and a celebration of Italian food by Rossini.Valentina describes her horror of tinned spaghetti on toast when she arrived in England in the 1970s, and shares her tips for using up Christmas leftovers, Italian-style. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

John Cleese has been making us laugh for more than 50 years. Back in the 1970s, he became a comedy legend in Monty Python and in Fawlty Towers, and he now has a second generation of fans, discovering for themselves his unique combination of surreal humour, verbal pyrotechnics and farce. So much so that even now, as he enters his eighties, John Cleese is recognised in the street all across the world. With almost six million Twitter followers, his is still a powerful voice, mocking those in power and generally trying to stir things up a bit. This programme was recorded while John was in Britain for a couple of weeks, over from LA to work on the script for the musical version of A Fish Called Wanda. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, he looks back on his childhood in Weston-super-Mare and the physical awkwardness that made him stand out from an early age – “six feet of chewed string”, as one of his teachers remarked. He remembers his fateful early decision not to be a lawyer but to try comedy instead. And he shares what he’s learned about the strange unconscious process of creativity. Music choices include Tchaikovsky, Scott Joplin and John Williams, as well as comedy sketches by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore – and John's favourite sketch from his own career, a double-act with Rowan Atkinson, “Beekeeping”. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

In a warm and frank interview, Hayley Mills talks to Michael Berkeley about the joys and difficulties of growing up in Hollywood as a child star and about the music that reminds her of her family. Hayley Mills was described by Walt Disney as ‘the greatest movie find in 25 years’. After winning a Bafta at the age of just 12 in the British crime thriller Tiger Bay alongside her father, John Mills, she was signed up by Disney for a six-movie deal which included The Parent Trap, In Search of the Castaways and Pollyanna - for which she won an Oscar in 1961. In a career spanning more than six decades, Hayley Mills has gone on to work all over the world in films, television and on stage, and she has just published a memoir of her early life called Forever Young.She tells Michael why she was unable to collect her Oscar, and about the agonies her parents suffered trying to decide whether or not she should sign with Disney and the pressures of juggling a double life between Hollywood and a chilly English boarding school. And she talks frankly about suffering from bulimia as a teenager, the problem of her mother’s drinking, and how her life changed forever at the age of 21, when she had to hand over almost all her childhood earnings to the Inland Revenue. A proud mother of two sons and grandmother of five, Hayley Mills chooses music by Tchaikovsky, by Mendelssohn and by Bach, which reminds her of her sister, the actor Juliet Mills; of her mother, the screenwriter Mary Hayley Bell; and of her partner, the actor Firdous Bamji. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Iain Sinclair describes himself as an urban prophet: in book after book, he has walked through London, recording the graffiti, the rubbish, the electric-green scum of a canal, the things you glimpse out of the corner of your eye and perhaps would rather not see. He brings to these pilgrimages many rich layers of reading about the city, interpreting what he sees through the eyes of past writers, particularly William Blake. In fact, he seems always to be walking with ghosts. It’s very hard to categorise his work, which is a rich blend of history, geography, travelogue, poetry, photography, literary criticism – sometimes all within a single book. Among dozens of publications over fifty years, he is probably best known for his walk around the M25, which became a film and a book, “London Orbital”. But in 2019, just before Covid, he embarked on an even more daring journey, to Peru. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Iain Sinclair talks about the journeys, which have shaped his life, and about how music has inspired those wanderings. Music choices include Stravinsky’s setting of the Dylan Thomas poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”; Mahler’s Eighth Symphony; a song by Britten originally intended for the song-cycle Les Illuminations; and the singing of the Bakaya People from the Central African Republic. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Nick Lane is a scientist who peers down microscopes at incredibly small cells in order to ask really big questions. How did life on Earth begin? Why is life the way it is? Why do we have sex? Why do we die?He is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London and the Co-Director of UCL’s Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution. He is also the award-winning author of five books, and his next – Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death – is due out in May.Nick Lane tells Michael Berkeley about his youthful ambition to be a violinist and how he funded his biochemistry studies by busking on the streets of London. He explains how his passion for the music of Janacek helped win him a place to study for his PhD, and how he unwound each evening to the sound of the early-twentieth-century American folk and blues musician Lead Belly.Nick Lane still plays the fiddle with his band in pubs and now also busks with his teenage son. He chooses folk music inspired by Handel; Bach played by his hero, the violinist Nathan Milstein; and music by Peter Maxwell Davies that brings back an unforgettable jamming session in a pub in Orkney.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

In a special edition of Private Passions for COP26, Michael Berkeley talks to Dr Tamsin Edwards about her career as a climate scientist and her lifelong passion for music. As a child, Tamsin wanted to be a concert pianist and she went on to play the clarinet, saxophone and double bass, and to sing in choirs. Music is still a vital part of her life but now she is one of our leading climate scientists, at King’s College London, studying the uncertainties of climate model predictions, particularly in relation to rising sea levels. In 2018 she joined the author team for the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change. Instantly recognizable with her trademark cropped blue hair, she is a passionate science communicator, blogging, writing for newspapers and frequently appearing on radio and television. Tamsin tells Michael how performing music helped her to develop the confidence to speak about science to governments, corporations and the public. We hear part of a Beethoven sonata that brings back memories of the terror she felt playing it for her Grade 8 Piano exam. She chooses music by Liszt for her mother, a concert pianist, and we hear her late father playing the trumpet with his New Orleans jazz band. And Tamsin talks movingly about her debilitating treatment for bowel cancer, paying tribute to the love and support of her partner, the television presenter Dallas Campbell, with piano music by Philip Glass.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

In this special programme for Radio 3’s Twilight Season, Michael Berkeley’s guest is the sleep scientist Professor Matthew Walker.So many of us have trouble sleeping, and are longing to find the secret of a good night’s rest, that when Matthew Walker goes to parties he is more likely to tell people he is a dolphin trainer than the world’s leading expert on sleep science. Otherwise, he says, ‘for me the evening is over’.Matthew began his career in Britain, training as a doctor, but he is now Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Berkeley, California and the founder and director of the Centre for Sleep Science. He is the author of more than 100 scientific papers and his best-selling book Why We Sleep has been translated into over 40 languages. Matthew tells Michael about the ‘global sleep crisis’, the sleep deficit that is costing individuals their health and economies billions. He explains why it is so important to get at least seven hours of sleep a night and the dangers to our physical and mental health if we regularly get even an hour less than that. And he describes the joys of sleeping and dreaming, and the magic they work on our creativity, memory and wellbeing. Matthew has chosen music with a restful, sleep-inducing tempo and rhythm by Debussy, Chopin, Handel and Purcell, as well as a track that transports him back to his home town of Liverpool. And he tells Michael about the most important scientific conversation of his career – with a pianist. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Diplomat, Soldier, Explorer, Politician, Academic – Rory Stewart defies easy labels. By his own admission, his identity is complicated: he describes himself as “a Scot, born in Hong Kong and brought up in Malaysia”. After Eton, he went on to Oxford and to the Diplomatic Service, but then abandoned this conventional career path and spent two years walking across Afghanistan and Iran. He became a deputy governor in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, and then ten years later entered British politics as a Tory MP, serving under both Cameron and May, and finally making a bold bid to become Party Leader and Prime Minister. When Boris Johnson won the election in 2019 he resigned, and threw his hat into the ring to become the new London mayor. After that contest was delayed by Covid, he left politics, and indeed left the country; he now teaches international relations and politics at Yale University. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Rory Stewart reveals that he feels nothing but relief at leaving politics behind. He looks back at the years he spent in Afghanistan and wonders how much of that work will survive, and he explains why he’s now moving with his young family to Jordan. Music choices take him back to his father, who often sang to him, and to his travels in the Borders and in Iran. He talks too about his search for religious belief, a yearning expressed by a Bach cantata; and why above all we must continue to hope – not despair – about the future. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Mark Solms is a neuroscientist who has spent his whole career investigating the mysteries of consciousness. His research throws light on some of the most difficult questions of all: how does the mind connect to the body? Why does it feel like something to be you? Born in Namibia and educated in South Africa, he came to Britain in his late twenties to avoid military service under the apartheid regime. He made his name with research into what happens in the brain when we’re dreaming; then he startled his scientific colleagues by training as a psychoanalyst, something which, he says, “put me at odds with the rest of my field”. He’s now very unusual in holding eminent positions within both psychoanalysis and scientific research. He’s the author of six books – his latest is "The Hidden Spring" – and he divides his time between London and Cape Town, where he also pursues his other career... as a winemaker. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Mark Solms reveals the traumatic childhood event which made him determined to become a doctor, when his brother jumped off a roof and suffered a major brain injury. He discusses the latest research on dreams, and how working with brain-damaged people can teach us about the nature of consciousness. And he tells the story of how he tried to rescue his family vineyard from the wider historical trauma of the apartheid past. Mark chooses music which he hopes will illuminate the nature of consciousness itself: Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata, Bach, Ligeti, Chopin, and Talking Heads.

Esther Freud talks to Michael Berkeley about her extraordinary childhood and her passion for story telling in both words and music. After attending drama school and making appearances in The Bill and Dr Who, Esther Freud changed direction at the age of 20 and turned to writing. She found instant success with her first novel, Hideous Kinky, which drew on her experience of living in Morocco as a very young child with her mother and sister Bella. She was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists and has gone on to write eight more books, the latest being I Couldn’t Love You More. Esther tells Michael about her childhood passion for telling stories and how her experiences in Morocco dominated her imagination for years afterwards. She conjures up memories of life in North Africa with a song by the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.As she grew older she grew closer to her father, the painter Lucian Freud, partly by sitting for him and partly by their sharing a rare holiday. We hear Lotte Lenya singing Kurt Weill, which reminds Esther of her father’s German heritage. Esther learned the cello at school and its sound has remained an abiding love; she chooses music by Saint-Saëns and by the contemporary English composer Michael Hoppé. And music from Britten’s Peter Grimes transports her to her beloved Suffolk coast. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Walter Iuzzolino is an Italian television presenter who has become well known on our screens thanks to Walter Presents, Channel 4’s free streaming service of European television dramas. He’s a man with a mission to open up European culture to the British, and he has now begun a specially curated publishing list too, so that we can read the latest European fiction. Alongside that latest venture, he’s created special playlists – because together with his passion for European television and literature, Walter Iuzzolino is a classical music fan, with a love of Chopin. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Walter reflects on the challenges of opening up British culture to “foreign” influences, and explains why he’d actually rather live in London than Genoa. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Francesca Stavrakopoulou is fascinated by the Bible, and she’s a leading scholar of those ancient texts which have so profoundly shaped how we see the world. She’s Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter; she’s also a convinced and passionate atheist. She is the author of several books about the Bible, and her most recent is her most daring: called “God: An Anatomy”, it draws on the Bible to describe the body of God, from head to foot, in a way she herself describes as “very controversial”. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Francesca talks about how her early fascination with Greek gods has inspired her to think differently about the God of the Bible. She talks movingly too about her partner, who served as a marine in Afghanistan, and how difficult it is to adjust to life after the army. Music choices include Tallis, Beethoven, Elgar, and Handel’s portrayal of her favourite Biblical heroine, Athalia.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The writer Helena Attlee transports Michael Berkeley to the sounds, smells, tastes and music of Italy. Helena has spent most of her life immersed in Italian culture, and she has written two bestselling books that take her readers to the heart of Italy via unexpected avenues: The Land Where Lemons Grow tells the story of citrus-growing in Italy, from the Medici to the Mafia; and Lev’s Violin recounts her obsessive search in Italy and beyond to discover the history of a battered but beautiful old violin. Helena chooses music by Paganini that takes her to the Tuscan garden once owned by Napoleon’s sister; a folk song from Sicily, the heartland of Italian citrus farming; and a moving recording of singing from the windows of Siena during the lockdown. She tells Michael how for much of her life she felt excluded from classical music until one evening, and one violin, transformed her relationship with music and changed the direction of her life.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Peggy Seeger’s extraordinary musical career spans six and a half decades. Since the age of 17 she has been writing, performing and recording songs pretty much non-stop. At the age of 80 she won the BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best New Song with her son Calum and earlier this year, at the age of nearly 86, she released her latest album. Peggy tells Michael Berkeley about her complex 30-year love affair with Ewan McColl, which was at the heart of the British folk revival; together they produced more than 40 albums, the revolutionary Radio Ballads for the BBC – and three very musical children. Peggy describes her surprise and joy at falling in love with a woman 30 years ago; she chooses contemporary a cappella music that reminds her of her wife, Irene. And we hear a piece of extraordinary complexity by Peggy’s mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, one of the most important modernist composers of the 20th century, whose early death changed the course of Peggy’s life.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Michael Berkeley’s guest is the theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku - without doubt the only guest ever to have built a particle accelerator in their garage while still in high school. After that auspicious start Michio went onto become the co-founder of string theory in the 1970s; a professor at The City University of New York; and one of the world’s most prominent scientists.He is also a great science communicator, so alongside his hundreds of scientific papers, he has written bestselling science books and appears regularly on television and radio all over the world. His latest book, The God Equation, describes his quest to continue Einstein’s search for a ‘theory of everything’.Michio tells Michael how that particle accelerator drove his mother to distraction by blowing every fuse in the house and how his parents survived internment as Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. And he shares his passion for ice dancing to opera arias and his life-long love of the trumpet. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Carole Boyd is an accomplished theatre actress: she has recorded some three hundred audio books, and she does all the female voices in Postman Pat. But all this pales into insignificance compared with the role she has played on radio for thirty-five years, as Archer's character Lynda Snell. More than five million Archers listeners have been listening to her as the snobbish but good-hearted Lynda since she first arrived in Ambridge, in 1986. Lynda is the Archers’ theatre director, putting on pantomimes and musicals; and Carole Boyd too is musical, creating words and music shows. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Carole Boyd tells the story of how she became an actress, despite the opposition of her family (she applied to drama school secretly) and how she was inspired to create the inimitable grating speech of Lynda Snell by the voice of her husband’s secretary. She concedes that her identity has become somewhat blurred with Lynda’s, and that channeling Lynda’s assertiveness is very useful when doing battle with utility companies on the phone. She admits, though, that she has never got close to a llama (unlike Lynda). More seriously, Carole Boyd talks movingly about what it’s like to care for her husband, Patrick, who had a major stroke in 2003. She speaks very honestly about the daily reality of life as a carer: the loneliness, the frustration, the mourning for the person you used to know, and still love. Carole Boyd’s playlist ranges from Schubert and Debussy to The Beatles, taking in Vaughan Williams, Canteloube, and Aaron Copland. We hear too Laurence Olivier with the St Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V.A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

One of the things that stands out, over more than 20 years of Private Passions, is the very strong connection between music and memory: as people choose music, which takes them way back, vividly evoking pivotal moments in their lives, it can be deeply emotional. Veronica O’Keane is perfectly placed to explain that response: as a practising psychiatrist, she’s spent many years observing how memory and experience are interwoven, working with patients whose memories are often broken or disrupted through brain tumours or mental illness. She’s Professor of Psychiatry and Consultant Psychiatrist at Trinity College Dublin, and the author of The Rag and Bone Shop: How we Make Memories and Memories Make Us.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Professor O’Keane explains the latest research on memory, and why unreal experiences such as psychotic delusions can leave people with lasting traumatic memories, even when they know they’re false. She chooses music that evokes a series of “memory snapshots” from her own life, going back to her childhood in rural Ireland. And she reveals that she has the perfect antidote to the sadness of her professional life: she swims every morning in the cold sea near her home in Howth. Music choices include Bach’s cello suites, Maria Callas, John Lennon and Philip Glass, as well as the traditional Irish musicians she loves. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

For almost a decade, Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s right-hand man, first as Press Secretary and then as Downing Street Director of Communications. He was at the heart of power through the Good Friday Agreement, the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War, which involved him in the greatest controversy. These days he’s a writer and mental health campaigner, and he’s recently published a very frank book, “Living Better: How I learned to survive depression”.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Alastair Campbell talks about how music helps him manage depression, and reveals his lifelong passion for the bagpipes. His father, who was from the Hebrides, played, and he and his brother Donald learned as boys. Donald was diagnosed with schizophrenia when Alastair was only nineteen: “a defining event in my life”. Donald left Alastair his bagpipes when he died, too young; and he also left recordings of himself playing – one of which we hear in the programme. Alastair himself played the pipes as a busker in the South of France as a student, where he discovered a lifelong musical passion for the songs of Jacques Brel. Other music choices include Mozart, Schubert, and Verdi’s famous drinking song from La Traviata. Alcohol has played a major role in Campbell’s life, and he talks about being drawn to the “drinking cultures” of both piping and politics. In fact, he says, it is not alcohol but politics – and his need to be needed by people in power – which is his real “demon”. He discusses too his inability to retire, his hatred of domesticity, particularly shopping with his partner Fiona, and why the satirical series “The Thick of It” is in some ways very close to the bone.A Loftus Media production from BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes talks to Michael Berkeley about her favourite music, making the classics funny and the joy of running.Just like the ancient Greek dramatists she loves, Natalie excels in both tragedy and comedy. She has written three novels, which retell stories from Greek myth, and she has had a long-running parallel career as a stand-up comedian, including her hugely popular Radio 4 series, Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics. Central to all her work is her focus on the much-neglected stories of women in the ancient world and particularly in Greek myth. Natalie talks to Michael about why stories and myths from the ancient world continue to resonate so powerfully today and how classics is changing as women scholars and novelists reclaim ancient stories and retell them from a female perspective. She chooses music by Elgar, by Cole Porter, and by two contemporary women composers, Annelies van Parys and Calliope Tsoupaki, who have been inspired by women in Greek myth. And we hear one of the best-loved pieces inspired by a classical story: Dido’s Lament, from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. We hear the music by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which Natalie loves to run to, and a surprising choice, which for her conjures up the beauty and power of the music of Orpheus. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

If you’ve ever wondered why you love blue and hate the colour khaki, or have spent hours arguing over a colour chart because you and your partner can’t agree on how to paint the bedroom, you’ll be fascinated by Professor Anya Hurlbert. She’s a neuroscientist and a leading researcher into how the brain perceives colour, and why we feel so strongly about it. Brought up in Texas, studying at Princeton and Harvard, she is now Professor of Visual Neuroscience at the University of Newcastle; she’s also spent years advising the National Gallery on how to show their pictures so we can see the colours most vividly. She’s married to the science writer Matt Ridley.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Anya Hurlbert discusses the scientific research that reveals the world’s favourite colour: blue. She talks about how the brain processes colour, and why colour perception is so individual and so bafflingly complex. A few years ago for instance, ten million people took to Twitter to argue about the colour of ‘The Dress’ – was it blue and black, or white and gold? Professor Hurlbert got hold of the real dress, put it in a tent in Newcastle, and invited people to come look at it. So, can she tell us what colour it is really? Music is incredibly important in Anya Hurlbert’s life, and she grew up with an ambition to be a concert pianist. She still finds that playing Bach ‘calms her soul’. Music choices include Bach, Beethoven, and two composers she believes should be better known: Thea Musgrave and Elisabeth Lutyens. She chooses a song by Schubert which is all about the colour green. And she reveals her passion for country music, with Jerry Jeff Walkers “Up Against the Wall, Red Neck Mother”. Produced by Elizabeth Burke. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The writer and art critic Laura Cumming talks to Michael Berkeley about the music and art she loves and the extraordinary story of her family. Laura has been writing about art for The Observer for more than two decades, but her books suggest that at heart she’s really a detective. All three have unravelled mysteries: a missing Velázquez painting; the inner lives of great artists revealed through their self-portraits; and the secrets and lies which lay behind the kidnap of her mother, aged three, on a Lincolnshire beach in 1929.She describes how her mother overcame childhood trauma and neglect to become an artist and the lynchpin of her own loving family. Her mother introduced Laura to classical music and she chooses a Chopin Nocturne and a performance by Andrés Segovia to remind her of the music they listened to together when she was growing up in Edinburgh. Laura describes the emotional power of art and music, from the overpowering effect of her favourite painting by Velázquez to the music of Bach, Shostakovich, Mozart and the music of the Hebrides, where she spent childhood holidays.And she reveals why, despite her passion for music, she can’t bear to go to concerts. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

With her shocking pink hair and extravagantly colourful clothes, Dame Zandra Rhodes has been an instantly recognisable figure on the British fashion scene for more than fifty years. An artist as much as a clothes designer, she tells Michael Berkeley about her experiences dressing everyone from Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Diana, to Freddie Mercury and Marc Bolan. As well as fashion, she has developed a passion for opera, designing productions for San Diego Opera and for Houston, in America, and for the English National Opera. She chooses music from operas by Bizet, Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, and talks about her admiration for singers, and the particular challenges of designing costumes for the stage.Zandra describes her evolution as a fashion designer, in particular how her screen-printed fabrics are at the heart of her designs. And how, at the age of 80, every morning she puts on brightly coloured clothes, jewellery and full make-up, and heads to her studio – with no intention of retiring. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

George Szirtes arrived in Britain at the age of eight, wearing only one shoe. It was 1956, and as the Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, George and his family fled on foot across the border to Austria, eventually ending up (with many others) as refugees in London. It was such a hasty journey that one of his shoes got lost on the way. From a very early age, he wanted to be a poet – and he has certainly fulfilled that ambition over the last forty years, publishing close to 20 books of prize-winning poetry, and as many translations from Hungarian literature. His moving memoir, The Photographer at 16, won the James Tait Black Prize and was recently broadcast on Radio 4.George talks to Michael from his house in Wymondham, an old butcher’s shop which he and his wife, the artist Clarissa Upchurch, have decorated with dramatic murals. He discusses his memories of leaving Hungary, walking across the border, and about how he then went further back, reconstructing his mother’s incarceration in concentration camps during the War. He explains too the project of writing a poem every day on Twitter, which has enlivened this strange period of lockdown. His playlist includes Tallis, Bartók, Bach, Ravel and Berlioz – as well as an early blues recording from 1931. What they all have in common, he says, is that each opened a door for him into a new world. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of eight, Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her; in fact, she asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that could help. Twenty years on – after taking her PhD in biochemistry and embarking on a career as a scientist – Camilla has herself has written that manual. She’s called it “Explaining Humans” and it won the Royal Society Prize in 2020 for the best science book . A highly original blend of scientific theory and personal memoir, it gives a real insight into what it’s like to live with autism.In a fascinating conversation with Michael Berkeley, Camilla Pang talks about how she’s learned to thrive in a world which can seem very overwhelming. One of the issues for her is the sensory overload that people with autism spectrum disorder can experience. She’s very sensitive to certain sounds, and the morning commute to work can jangle her senses to such an extent that it takes much of the morning to recover. Music, on the other hand, restores mental calm. Camilla sings and plays the piano; although she has never learned to read music, she can “catch” a tune after hearing it only once. She did this first as a very young child, hearing her mother’s favourite Michael Nyman track and reproducing it straight away on her toy xylophone. Camilla shares the music that has sustained her over the years; we hear Hubert Parry’s great coronation anthem “I was glad”; Michael Nyman’s music for The Piano; William Byrd’s “Ave Verum Corpus”; Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”, and Teardrop by Massive Attack.Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The writer and entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan shares her lifelong passion for classical music with Michael Berkeley and describes how we can best prepare for an unpredictable future.Born in Texas, raised in Holland and educated in Britain, Margaret Heffernan has had a hugely varied career – she’s been a high profile entrepreneur and the CEO of multimedia technology companies in America; she’s written plays and spent 13 years as a BBC producer; she’s a Professor of Practice at the University of Bath; she’s written seven bestselling and prize-winning business books and her Ted Talks have been watched by more than twelve million people.Underlying everything Margaret does are her unconventional, inclusive ideas about leadership summed up by her motto: ‘Let's not play the game, let's change it.’ Margaret’s intense curiosity about the world is reflected in her lifelong desire to discover music. She trained as a singer while living in America and she chooses music she studied by Vivaldi and by Monteverdi; part of a requiem by the contemporary composer Nick Bicat; and a piece by William Brittelle performed by the experimental vocal group Roomful of Teeth, to which her son introduced her. And we hear part of Anthony Burgess’s rarely heard operetta Blooms of Dublin, which was produced for the BBC in 1982 by her first husband Michael who was killed when they had been married for just two years. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

James Shapiro is one of the world’s great Shakespeare scholars. A professor of English at Columbia University in New York, he is the author of seven major books, including the bestsellers "1599" and "1606", each of which zoomed in on one year, immersing us in Elizabethan and Jacobean culture and politics. His latest book is “Shakespeare in a Divided America”, an intriguing study of how the bard has been staged – and fought over – on his side of the Atlantic. But Professor Shapiro describes himself as “the least academic academic I know”: he is deeply involved in the practical business of staging Shakespeare, working with The Globe in London, with the RSC, and with a New York company that takes plays into schools and prisons.In an episode to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday, James Shapiro talks about how he first fell in love with the Bard, despite a terrible teacher at school who put him off as a teenager. He reflects on his upbringing in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, and the family reaction when he married an Irish Catholic. He reveals why holding hands had a different meaning in Elizabethan England. And, drawing on historical parallels, he tells Michael Berkeley that he is absolutely certain we will have a thriving theatre culture again soon: after a plague (or a pandemic) people need the theatre.For Private Passions, James Shapiro creates a playlist which gathers together fellow-admirers of Shakespeare, with Mendelssohn, Duke Ellington and Cole Porter. The programme begins with an Elizabethan pop song with lyrics by Shakespeare himself. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Kieran Hodgson tells Michael Berkeley how he turned his lifelong obsession with Mahler, and his own struggle to write a symphony, into comedy gold. Fortunately for us Kieran put aside an early ambition to become a train driver and has instead forged a career as one of our most entertaining actors, writers and comedians. He’s won awards and accolades at Edinburgh for shows on the unlikely subjects of school French exchanges, British politics in the 1970s – and his obsession with late-Romantic music. You might know him from his Radio 4 show Earworms – comic introductions to the great composers – and for his television roles in Two Doors Down, Upstart Crow and God’s Own County. And you might also be one of the tens of millions of people who have enjoyed his ‘Bad TV’ parodies on YouTube. Music is central to Kieran’s life: he’s been playing the violin in amateur orchestras since childhood and composing since he was in his teens. He chooses an unfairly neglected concerto by Bruch; Schnittke’s breath-taking Choir Concerto; and music by Schoenberg, by Bernstein and – in a first for Private Passions – by the Dutch cabaret artist Wim Sonneveld. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Some 40 years ago, Teresa Keswick exchanged her career as a London lawyer for life as a nun in an enclosed and largely silent Carmelite monastery in Norfolk. She’s devoted her life to prayer and work and has become a highly skilled embroiderer. Since 2014 she’s written a regular column for The Oldie magazine. In a special programme, originally broadcast on Easter Day 2021, Sister Teresa shares her fascinating life story and the music she loves with Michael Berkeley. Teresa tells Michael about her initial reluctance to accept her vocation and leave her busy social life in London for a remote monastery in the Norfolk countryside and the contentment she eventually found in the strict daily routine of prayer and work. She chooses pieces by Handel and by Beethoven that reflect her life before she became a nun, and two pieces of plainchant that play a central role in the life of her community. She describes her ongoing love of 1960s pop music and we hear a song by Simon and Garfunkel that she still plays when she has a day off from work, once a month. And she appreciates the importance of having fun – in life and in music – choosing the party scene from the opening of La traviata, which recalls a wonderful evening at the opera when she lived in London. Teresa describes how her community celebrates Easter Day and chooses music from Bach’s Mass in B Minor; she says this music is the only thing that comes close to describing Christ’s resurrection. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Bill Browder describes himself as Vladimir Putin’s number one enemy. When Putin came to power, Browder was the most successful international businessman in Moscow, seizing the opportunities offered by the collapse of communism to build up a multi-billion-pound investment fund. But then he uncovered what he calls serious corruption at various state-backed companies. In 2005, he was detained by the authorities and was kicked out of Russia. His tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky was arrested, and died in prison in Moscow in 2009. In his memory, Browder has spent the past decade leading a global campaign against Russian corruption – Magnitsky Acts have now been passed in America, Britain and Europe – legislation freezing the assets, and banning travel, of officials guilty of human rights violations. Browder’s exciting account of his time in Russia, Red Notice, has become a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic.In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Browder tells his extraordinary and compelling personal story. He now lives in a secret location somewhere in London and lives in fear of his life. He talks about the guilt he felt when Magnitsky died, and how he found a new meaning in life afterwards, by campaigning for the laws which bear Magnitsky’s name. Browder’s music choices reflect the high drama of his life, with excerpts from operas by Verdi and by Puccini which he discovered when he went to the Bolshoi in Moscow. He includes too music by the Russian composer Sviridov, a setting of a Pushkin short story. And he ends with Jessye Norman singing “Amazing Grace” – a hymn which reflects his belief that he has been helped, and sustained, by powerful forces outside his control.A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3 Produced by Elizabeth Burke

The shepherd and writer James Rebanks shares his favourite music with Michael Berkeley and describes how he is restoring the balance of nature on his Lake District hill farm.James Rebanks’s family have lived and farmed in Cumbria for over six hundred years. His grandfather taught him to work their land in the old-fashioned way, but by the time James took over from his father, modern industrial methods and economic pressures had made hill farming almost impossible. James has told the story of his farm, his family, and his renewed hope for the future, in two best-selling books: "The Shepherd’s Life" and "English Pastoral".James tells Michael about the challenges and pleasures of spring for a shepherd, with long days and nights lambing his beloved Herdwick sheep, and his relief at the end of winter. He describes the tensions in his relationship with his father when he was growing up and how films brought them together; he chooses film scores by John Barry and by Jerome Moross. James’s mother introduced him to books and classical music and Rachmaninov particularly reminds him of his mother.James tells Michael the extraordinary story of his education: dropping out of school at 15 with just two O levels, he won a place at Oxford in his early twenties and gained a double first in History. And he pays a moving tribute to his wife Helen with music by Michael Nyman as together they witness the joyful return of wildlife to their farm.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Dublin-born artist Sean Scully is known worldwide for his abstract paintings of blocks and stripes of bold colour. You can see his work in the Tate, the Guggenheim, and the National Gallery of Ireland, among many other prestigious collections. He was brought up in what he describes as “abject poverty” and his paintings now fetch more than a million pounds; he and his wife and son fly back and forth between two homes, one south of Munich and one in New York. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Sean looks back at his post-war childhood. His Irish father was a deserter and the family was on the run, often living with travellers. Once they moved to London, his mother earned a living as a vaudeville singer; she had an act with the transvestite performer next door. Sean worked as a builder’s labourer but discovered art through going to church with his Catholic grandmother. The stained-glass windows made an unforgettable impression. He went to night school, determined to be an artist, but was rejected by eleven art schools. He discusses the toughness needed to become an artist, especially in “brutal” New York. He admits that his restlessness now – constantly moving around the world, and buying up property – is a legacy from his traveller childhood. And he reveals the power music has over him when he’s painting.Music choices include Brahms’ Cello Sonata No 1' Schubert’s String Quintet; Kodály’s Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello; Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony; and Bartok’s First String Quartet. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Caroline Bird was only fifteen when she had her first collection of poems published; she’s been writing since she was eight, hiding in the corner behind her bunk beds at home. This was in Leeds, where Caroline was brought up, the daughter of playwright Michael Birch and theatre director Jude Kelly. She’s now published six collections of poetry, along with a clutch of plays for theatre and radio. Her latest poetry sequence “The Air Year” was awarded the prestigious Forward Prize for the best collection of poetry published this last year. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Caroline Bird talks about the impact of being published as a teenager, and about the depression that led her to drug addiction by the time she was a student. She confesses she finds classical music without words almost unbearably emotional – as a child, it made her deeply sad. Understanding that sadness and coming to terms with it, she returns now to music she heard when she was young, going as far back as the music her mother played to her in the womb. Music choices include Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano; Janet Baker singing Elgar’s Sea Pictures; Billie Holiday; and Lionel Bart's Oliver!Produced by Elizabeth BurkeA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

The economist Tim Harford shares his passion for contemporary classical music with Michael Berkeley.Tim Harford has for many years been the Undercover Economist at the Financial Times; he is the author of nine books, and is a familiar voice on Radio 4 as the presenter of More or Less, Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy, and now also How to Vaccinate the World.Tim is on a mission to show us how, if properly investigated and explained, good statistics can help us see things about the world and about ourselves that we would not be able to see in any other way. He was awarded an OBE for services to improving economic understanding in 2019.Tim talks to Michael Berkeley about how his love of music developed in childhood, encouraged by his father, who introduced him to composers such as Janáček and Britten. He chooses music by his favourite contemporary composers Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Steve Reich, and a beautiful piece of choral music by Arvo Pärt that was sung at his wedding.Tim spends his working life pursuing cool-headed analysis of statistics and data but he reveals to Michael Berkeley the piece of music that makes him surrender to his most passionate emotions.Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Rachel Clarke is a doctor who specialises in palliative care. She’s now on the Covid frontline; in March 2020 she moved to Horton General Hospital outside Banbury to care for the most gravely unwell patients on the Covid Wards. She’s the author of three books: the first, about being a junior doctor; the second, which was read on Radio 4, “Dear Life”, about working with the dying, and most recently, “Breath-taking”, which describes in moving detail what it’s been like in hospitals during the pandemic. In a moving programme recorded in mid-January, Rachel Clarke gives a frontline report from the hospital where she works. When she looks out of the window, she sees lines of parked cars – and people just sitting in them, watching the hospital, for hours: unable to visit their loved ones, they are just getting as close as they can, yearning for a glimpse through the windows. Instead, nursing staff must give loving care to people who are at the end of their lives - Rachel reassures listeners that nobody in hospital will ever die alone. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Rachel Clarke reveals the music that gives her courage and hope on the way to the hospital every morning. She talks about the difficulty of explaining to her children why she has taken such personal risks to treat Covid patients, and shockingly she reveals the kind of abuse she faces on social media from people who think that Covid is fake. Music choices include Vaughan Williams, Bach, and Tchaikovsky. She loves Jimi Hendrix too, and tells the story of driving down to the South of France with the man who will become her husband, terrified to tell him she loves him, listening to Hendrix all the way. A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3. Produced by Elizabeth Burke.